Network operators have enough incentive to protect networks from cyber attacks, major telecom industry officials said Wednesday at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing. But legislators should remove barriers to information sharing, promote cybersecurity education and invest in research and development, they said. The witnesses said new mandates are unnecessary and potentially burdensome. “We don’t know what it is that you should be telling us to be doing,” said AT&T Chief Security Officer Edward Amoroso.
Following its plan to be a “disruptive force” in the radio business, Pandora said in its fiscal Q4 earnings webcast Tuesday it expects to be “larger than the largest FM or AM radio station in most markets in the U.S.” by the end of the year. With significant growth in listener hours, the Internet radio company’s relevance to traditional radio advertising buyers “is skyrocketing,” said CEO Joe Kennedy.
BRUSSELS -- Spectrum regulators and users must rethink spectrum allocation in order to make white spaces and other shared uses possible, speakers said Wednesday at a Forum Europe conference on an EU policy for dynamic spectrum access. Cognitive technologies will squeeze more out of radio spectrum, but in practice “we're a long way” from having them, said moderator and Aetha Consulting partner Amit Nagpal. Despite successful white spaces trials in the U.S. and U.K., the regulatory issues for dynamic shared access are far from resolved, regulators and industry representatives said.
The FCC is expected to conduct a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum in 18-24 months, said Amy Levine, a senior aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski. Blair Levin, who led FCC development of the National Broadband Plan, warned that the U.S. is “moving backwards, not forwards” in getting more spectrum online for broadband. They spoke at a Minority Media and Telecom Council forum Tuesday.
TV stations need ownership flexibility because the spectrum auction the FCC wants to hold could hurt the industry unless it continues to use multicasting and other arrangements linking separately owned stations within a market, some broadcasters said. Networks and affiliates alike cited last month’s passage of spectrum legislation in saying the agency shouldn’t place new limits on use of multicast channels to transmit signals of two or more network affiliates. But networks and affiliates disagreed on whether the agency should lift a ban on common ownership of more than one top-four rated broadcast network. And nonprofits and station owners of all stripes disagree, in comments on a media ownership rulemaking notice, on whether new media ginned up enough competition to TV to warrant more broadcaster mergers and acquisitions, much as they disagreed in the last quadrennial review.
Smaller ISPs are taking a variety of approaches to managing consumer bandwidth use, and many are watching closely the moves by industry peers such as Time Warner Cable, which is again testing a usage-based pricing model in Texas. TWC has said it will offer a slightly lower bill to customers who accept a lower monthly bandwidth allotment of up to 5 GB a month, with overages costing $1 per additional GB. Companies that have recently instituted new broadband policies said they affect very few subscribers.
Republicans beat back Democratic opposition to a broad proposal to revamp FCC process, approving HR-3309 by a 31-16 vote Tuesday. But Democrats joined Republicans in supporting by voice vote an amended HR-3310 to consolidate FCC reports. The bills next move to the House floor. But the Democratic-controlled Senate has shown little interest in FCC revamp.
BERLIN -- Governments at a diplomatic conference Tuesday drew close to a decision on the financial obligations of satellite companies. Representatives cleared the last substantive hurdles before final consideration of a proposal to the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment that could lead to the ITU overseeing an international register that would be used to establish priority for creditors in space investments, participants told us. Talks will continue Wednesday to work out remaining kinks for formal consideration later this week, official said.
An FCC decision to put off a key policy call on how Dish Networks can use spectrum it’s buying from TerreStar and DBSD creates significant uncertainty for the future of the frequencies, industry officials said Monday. The International Bureau released an order late Friday (http://xrl.us/bmwqn9) that approved Dish’s purchase, but denied its request for a waiver of the integrated services rules for the spectrum (CD March 5 p1). FCC officials hope to wrap up a rulemaking notice on the use of the spectrum by the end of the year. Industry officials said Monday the delays now built into the deal underscore the complications of bringing online for broadband any of the spectrum bands delineated in the FCC National Broadband Plan.
Online video distributors’ concerns on giving to executives at Comcast and its NBCUniversal access to programming deals signed with major broadcast, cable and film companies underscores for some the difficulty in enforcing government behavioral conditions on mergers and acquisitions. The now-merged companies want the FCC to change terms of a protective order so their executives and in-house lawyers can see OVDs’ deals with other major programmers so they can deliver on the benchmarking condition in the 2011 order OK'ing Comcast buying control of NBCUniversal. While it seems reasonable for Comcast and NBCU to want and perhaps get such expanded access -- outside counsel and consultants now can view the benchmarking documents -- it raises competitive concerns and shows why it’s hard to deliver on such remedies, lawyers who opposed or backed the deal said in interviews Monday.